The Pissed Off Professor

Summer Session Start Countdown: T-Minus 8 Days

A new semester is approaching, and I’m at the stage during which I begin to awake in the middle of the night from either odd dreams about teaching, or things I must remember to get done before the session begins.

Last night’s wake-up call had to do with my arriving to my first day only to find my handouts hadn’t been photocopied as I’d requested. Unable to get them done before the scheduled start-time of my first class, I’d be forced to begin my first day unprepared.

I know where this dream came from: I’m experiencing a good deal of concern over the having an 8:00 am class. Now, before you laugh, let me put this in perspective: I live 75 to 90 minutes from my campus—75 minutes without traffic and 90 minutes with.

However, in the three years I’ve lived up in the mountains, the commute traffic I’ve hit has been of two kinds: the return home kind when the delays are frustrating but can’t result in my being late (or rushed), or the mid-morning kind when I drive into it and out of it in about 30 minutes’ time.

The route I travel is almost all (potential) commute mileage, and with an 8:00 am start time, I’ll be traveling among the folks en route to work for 60 of that 90 minutes: I’ll hit all four of the cities I pass through either at the beginning or heart of their commute-times, and the potential for accident and traffic delays is a math problem I can’t handle with my English-teacher’s brain.

My concern is not getting up: I wake up on my own between 5:30 and 6:00 am, so setting an alarm for 5:00 am is not going to create disaster for me. My concern is whether or not leaving by 6:00 am (allowing two hours to drive and park and get to my classroom) is sufficient.

(I think we can all agree there is an ugly, palpable difference between getting up at 5:00 am and getting up at 4:30 am, and if I have to leave at 5:30, that means I’ll have to get up at 4:30 am, and that is not pretty.)

It also means I’ll miss most of the commute traffic, and that’ll put an even uglier spin on things: in other words, if leaving at 6:00 am won’t do, I’ll leave at 5:30 am, but leaving at 5:30 am will mean I’ll likely miss the commute traffic responsible for a 6:00 am departure’s ineffectiveness, so I’ll arrive at 6:45 am for an 8:00 am class.

It is a time-traveling problem, and I am the time traveler.

My goal has been to get to campus between 7:30 and 7:45 am which will allow me time to park, walk to my office, and get to class. (In a pinch, I might even have time to make some photocopies.)

Now it’s time to cue the scary music: when I dropped off my photocopies last week, I learned my classrooms had been changed. (One of the silver linings of the 8:00 am class was not only my teaching in the English building—saving time if I were behind—but also having both of my classes in the same room.)

My reassigned location? If one were to draw a line from my office to the farthest point on campus, one would land at the new location of my 8:00 am class. This means I must now add a few minutes to hike from my office to my first classroom to the mix of timing issues for the morning. (I’m in good shape, and I can walk with the best of them, but even at that, with a book-and-paper-filled bag or two, this is a 10-15 minute power-walking adventure, and I am obligated to stop at the office before beginning and ending each of my teaching days.)

There is not a quick-and-easy drive-here-drive-there parking solution, either. Our campus has been renovating the parking for the past year, so at least one staff and one student lot is in a state of construction at any point in time.

Last week, I saw they had torn up the main staff lot, so getting a space is going to be like a Christmas bonus in the summertime. (Though we don’t get Christmas bonuses. Or any bonuses. At all. Ever.)

Of course, given the time my class starts, I ought to be able to find a parking space, eh?

There’s that good ol’ silver lining—wheeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaw!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 9:14 am and is filed under Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.